And.....

....God made the laundry pile....and the laundry pile made the ironing pile...and the ironing pile made the putting away pile.....and the putting away pile made the no space in the cupboards pile.....

Europe part one - Cambridge to Positano

Where to begin, you are going to be sooo bored by the time this is all done, we seemed to fit so much into our two weeks away I really don't know what to include and what to leave out but I will endeavour not to be too long winded! (yeah I know, famous last words).

So...the purpose of the trip was in the main to attend a family wedding in Positano. We 'did' Western Europe last year on the bike and had intended to do the East this year but circumstances resulted in the re-visit and though we were on the dreaded four wheels and covered way less miles (yes, less is bad) than last year it was fabulous.


We left the UK via Dover early on the Saturday morning after very little sleep. Fletch's flight home from work the previous evening was as ever delayed and by the time we had booked our crossing and sorted out some insurance (plan ahead? Nooo, never, that's all part of the fun) it was already well into the wee small hours.

The crossing was sunny and uneventful but somehow in my ignorance I had imagined a small rest at that point....but no, we were straight onto the road for the 450 miles to Strasbourg and a utility night in an Ibis hotel. Fed and watered we slept like babies and continued on again early the next morning to overnight stop #2 in Florence. Another Ibis, no time for sightseeing, just sleep and dinner and off again at the crack of dawn for the final 600 mile haul to Southern Italy via Vesuvius (thankfully not erupting), Napoli (OMG the place looks like a shanty town in the sun), Sorrento (No opinion it whizzed by in a blur) and finally our destination, Positano.


What can I say....HOT, HOT, HOT about does it!

Positano itself is beautiful in a kind of upmarket way, the only campsite (tent remember) however was what I can best describe as not beautiful though it's great saving grace was a private beach within 20 meters, the reason I assume they felt it appropriate to charge extortionate fees for otherwise low grade facilities! It was by now late afternoon, we were very hot and dusty from erecting said tent on parched mud so we hit the beach and I had my first ever swim in the Med. Fantastic, I really never believed it could be so warm and clear....things were however about to take on something of a challenging nature.


Our tent is a two man (yes, very small) four seasons affair, built to withstand the worst the Himalayas can throw at it, our sleeping bags suffice down to minus 20 degrees...this is soooo not good in 40 plus degrees! I thought I might expire, despite leaving every doorway wide open and not venturing into my bag there wasn't a breath of air or breeze to be had and the temperature inside the tent soared well into the 50's. Add to that we had pitched under a tree for a little shade, only to discover at night something we had overlooked in our desperate search for shade. It was a fig tree and the ripe figs continually 'plopped' noisily onto the tent roof all night long.....most of the night I just drifted around outside in the dark and waited for the sun to rise.


Which of course it did, with blistering heat. Let me tell you, trying to get suited and booted into wedding attire in a small tent in that heat is probably not the best experience of my life....it was however very funny and in my usual less than discreet way I gave up, abandoning any sense of decorum and just quit the tent and got ready outside. Hell, everyone else was in bathing gear, what difference is under-gear?!

And onto the wedding. A stunning affair, the bride looked the most beautiful I have seen any bride look, the small relaxed ceremony took place on a balcony over the sea with the sunlight dancing like a million bright stars on it's surface, a soft breeze finally came from nowhere and the sun shone on in all it's glory against the backdrop of the hills. Perfect.



The reception was held at a fabulous hotel high up in the cliffs a few miles across the bay, the only reasonable access to which was by motor cruiser, which very kindly took the longer route to our destination while we gently rode the swell drinking champagne and listening to soft music. Probably one of the most relaxing and soothing experiences of my life.


Everything was beautiful. The celebrations took place on another balcony overlooking the sea and the cliffs, the long table was set beautifully, the glass, china and linen were immaculate, the service was almost faultless and we ate drank, laughed and listened to some of the best wedding speeches I have ever heard, as the sun went down on the sea and darkness fell into candlelight.

When the celebrations were over we had a moonlight trip back across the bay where a taxi picked us up to whisk us to what was to be our next two days accommodation....the most amazing villa set into a hillside, complete with frescos, pool and cats!


But that's a whole other post!

(Images clickable)

3500 miles....

....later and I'm back having had the most amazing time. We've done six countries, done temperatures from 3-43 degrees, swum in warm seas, been up in the mountains among the glaciers and met and enjoyed a fabulous evening with a blogger in Brussels you will all know!

But for now the reality is instead mountains of laundry to catch up on and 3 gig of photos to sort out so I will bore you with more once I have caught up. For now just a couple of pictures from the Italian Alps. They really can't convey the sheer magnitude of the mountains but for an idea check out the buildings in the right hand corner of the second image! These are pretty big hills!

Postcard from Switzerland

An update from Gem:

Hello :-)

I managed to get a little bit of charge in my phone at last. I hooked it up in the car but i could only do it for a little while! I'm beginning to miss sleeping in a real bed... Where everything isn't damp! The tent is fab but no matter what, you cant stop it from getting condensation when it gets so cold @ night.

I think we are moving on to Germany today.

Yesterday i made it up to the top of a mountain in a cable car... Eekk! It was almost vertical and 2500 meters but i loved it... Apart from the bit where it 'falls' off the top of the mountain. That was really scary. There is a bigger one but its £80 for the 2 of us to ride so i dont think we will do it! They are really expensive.... Everything in Switzerland is sooo expensive. Food is almost 3 times what it is in the uk!

It's beautiful tho :-) We sat in silence for ages at the top of the mountain and finally saw some wild marmots :-) lol

I think that's about everything now. :)

Hanging out in the Italian Alps

They're tenting it in a cooler climate now, and finding these, as they go along:

This is not the first cat along the way. Gem will have loads more pics for you when they get back. :)

Photograph from Positano

Monday night, from the tent (or a big hill nearby)

Very flaky signal had to walk to top of big hill to get anything at all! Lol. So hot here just south of sorrento in tent tonight. Family wedding tomorrow then we can move on. God knows how im gonna get dressed up in a tent! Lol.

Two cats here :-) ... And fig trees :-) prob awol tomorrow... Signal even worse there. See u soon!

Travelling Update

So, here are some travel updates from Miss, who someone talked into leaving the flat without actually having a laptop. Good on her! A nice holiday comes along too few and far between for laptop usage in the mix of seeing the sights, drinking beer, tasting authentic food, and finding local coffee and chocolate vendors.

The updates are direct from the mobile phone, which seems to experiencing a fading signal at this point:

Ferry to France, where there was champagne available in the petrol
station.

Switzerland - Sexy lingerie is available in the service
station. Smoking is allowed everwhere.

Looking at mountains and glaciers (Mt. Vesuvius.

Driving through a 17km tunnel and still getting a phone signal.

Bought cigarettes... one fifth the price of cigs in the UK.
Florence is lovely.

Good food, good coffee and beer. This is the life!

Driving 400 more miles (are we there yet). Next stop: Positano. It's hot and my cell signal is fading. (I love air conditioning!)

Here's hoping for lots of lovely photos and a very relaxed and happy Gem upon her return. :)

Have fun!
Lisa

We're all going on a summer holiday....

.....no more worries for a week or two... tra la la la tra la la tra la.

Come on, sing along! Ok, ok, no singing.

Well that's it...everything's finally packed, Fletch is home (flight delayed as ever) Hammy is relocated for the duration and the crossing is booked from Dover for 12.30 hrs today. First night in Strasbourg, second in Milan, third hopefully the destination, Positano, and then Europe is our oyster.

I'll try to post here and there along the way, though I've been banned from taking a lappy so it's down to internet cafes or my phone and consequently likely to be intermittent.

Now for a few hours sleep and then I'm gone, back in approx. two weeks. Yayyyyyy :o)

Just another day in gemmak's-ville

So, I woke to no water supply at 6am, that, it transpires, was the easy part of the day!

Midday the water was restored and we discover quite rapidly that some dipstick has left water running somewhere in his flat. He is of course not in residence. The building houses a fair number of 'elderly and infirm', there is much panic among said elderly and infirm as the water begins to flood the four floors below.

The floor immediately below houses a man who is almost 90 years of age and blind. His property is quickly 2 inches deep in water, he won't let anyone in to turn off his electrical supply and no-one can gain access to the flat above creating the problem.

I can't silence the fire alarm which is shrieking, I can't persuade the blind man to let me in but he tells me he is trying to locate his power to turn it off!!!! Whaattt??? Stood in water, blind and infirm???!!! Noooooo!!

I am now joined by various elderly souls issuing me with information that the flood is making it's way rapidly down the other four floors....and flapping.

Why has all this suddenly become my responsibility?

Ok....'firm words' issued to blind man about getting the hell out of his flat please and now, 999 call made, this may not be an emergency of enormous proportions but I don't have the local station number and I do have an old man trying his best to fry himself. E.S. operator wants to know everything but what colour my underwear is, strangely I don't have to hand contact numbers for a complete stranger in a building of 40 flats! Stopcock located but of course its too tight for me to shift, flats lower down checked for anyone else in distress and finally old man appears, wet and somewhat confused.

Boys in red appliance show up (sorry, the usual girly 'firemen' aspect is lost on me....I was married to one), narrowly beating the shame-faced owner of the offending flood, access is gained (damn, he deserved to have the fire brigade break down his door) and we discover he has left his power shower turned on and laying on the floor! WTF??

Daughter in law arrives shouting the odds, (hello?...how is this my fault exactly?) and takes charge of blind man, fire brigade 'make safe', owner paddles back into his flat to find insurance papers and finally I can go get a cup of coffee.....all this and did I forget to mention that I had Hammy in my handbag the whole time!!

Well, I didn't know it wasn't actually a fire when the alarm sounded did I??....and I sure as hell didn't get a chance to just 'pop' her back home for a while.

She is one very miffed hamster right now.

Really, I will get packed for this holiday!

Wot....no coffee???

The day has not started well!

Having woken with a start to the sound of my alarm clock, a particularly horrible noise that I consider should really be outlawed, and having scrambled out of bed very bleary eyed as the result of an hilarious night on Skype that went on way into the wee small hours...... I discover we have no water!! Zip, zilch, nada, not a drop.

The water board have no idea why at this juncture but promise service will be restored soon, despite their not yet having traced the problem, hmmmm, excuse my cynicism... and I have the big and final pre-holiday laundry to get done somehow!

But worse, much worse than any laundry issues, no water means no coffee, this is unthinkable, or it would be if my system had suitable levels of caffeine racing around it to enable me to think at all!

I'm beginning to believe Fletch when he says I'm jinxed, thus far the kettle, microwave, washing machine and amp. (though the amp. remains subject of some 'discussion') have all disintegrated on me, the Internet connection was as flaky as hell until recently and the power in the flat trips out if I use more than two items at once!

In fact there have been so many incidents of electrical failure in just six months that I have lost count and last night another was added to the list, the cooker hood extractor blew up on me in a reasonably spectacular manner!

Now no water!!

On the home stretch

These last few weeks have seemed interminable and fraught with difficulties and problems of varying degrees of magnitude but I think I made it through pretty reasonably, even if I do say so myself! Not everything is resolved but much is, the outcomes are some good, some bad but along the way I faced, and I think won in the main, a pretty big personal battle....and I'm still here to tell the tale!

Now, (fingers very crossed here, I hate to tempt fate) at last, we have made it to a good bit and a break from the day to day carrying-ons in the shape of three weeks much needed and anticipated holiday. We are on the home stretch and it's all looking good from here!

Fletch, 'Mr Workaholic-I-badly-need-a-break-geek' flies home on Friday night and sharpish on Saturday morning we hit the road for Dover, en-route to Positano in Southern Italy for a family wedding on Tuesday.

Post nuptials we have the rest of the time to do as we please, we have the tent, the car and no firm plans other than to meander about Europe and stop where we fancy. There is a vague idea we might do Venice, Rome and San Gimignano (well it would be rude not to) then head on into the Austrian Alps for the majority of the time...or until the money runs out! Even without the pleasures of the bike I can't wait!

We hadn't planned on doing Europe again this year. Holiday rule#1: never go back, there are too many other places in the world to see, but the wedding is a damn good excuse and the Alps just has to be a place worth breaking all the rules for!

And then, once the holiday is over, it is almost October and that brings with it even more great excitement because it is at the beginning of October that Lisa arrives in the UK and I finally get to meet my best friend for real!!

Now all I have to do is get my ass into gear to get the packing done (more coffee please) and then we can revel in a fun bit of life for a few weeks.

Yayyyy.....yipeeee.....hurahhh.....wooooooo!

:o)))) <------- very excited face!

Hamster in hiding!

Yesterday was our six monthly 'inspection'. By that I mean the day the letting agents who manage this flat come snooping around to check that we aren't wrecking the place, housing forty seven illegal immigrants or using it as a bordello.

It's always a pain, in the main of our own making I have to admit, because we smoke and the lease forbids such heinous activity, so inspection day always requires much rushing around with all the doors and windows open and cans of sweetly smelling air fresheners pressed into heavy service.

This time though there was one extra problem...Hammy! We aren't allowed pets either and whilst maybe we would get away with a hamster I wasn't going to test the theory, so the crack of dawn yesterday saw me racing around hatching a cunning plan to make her disappear temporarily!

This was no mean feat, given that her 'house' begins to resemble NASA and wouldn't fit in it's entirety in the designated hiding place, which from very limited options was the wardrobe! The whole kit and caboodle just wasn't going to fit and so I had to dismantle the whole issue and re-design a more compact pied a terre....all with one very stubborn and grumpy hamster still 'in situ'.


Eventually the task was complete, Hammy was installed in the bottom of the wardrobe and the multitude of spare parts were hidden away in cupboards...we were ready for inspection.

Oh no we weren't!

The inside of the wardrobe of course is dark, hamsters are nocturnal, her body clock was almost instantly thrown into confusion and she just wouldn't go to sleep, instead choosing to race around her (supposedly silent) wheel making a god-awful racket and scratching like merry hell trying to burrow her way out! Much faffing and many treats later she settled down some but as I was about to go out to the dentist and leave her to the inspector alone, should he arrive in my absence, she started up again!! Arghhhh.

I could think of no other option than to pretend (waddya mean 'pretend') I was a half-wit and turn on the bedroom radio, loud, in the hope that it would drown out her noise making antics and Mr Inspector man would assume I had left in a hurry and forgotten to turn it off!

In the event of course he didn't arrive until long after I had returned, so instead I steered him in and out of the bedroom poste haste and hammy remained safely undiscovered...then of course came the re-building NASA process and this time around an even more seriously disgruntled little hamster, who was by now completely fed up with all the disturbance and has very sharp teeth!

What a performance!

Commitment!